Saffron

Saffron is the spice made from the dried, golden-colored and pungent stigmas of the autumn crocus Crocus sativus, which are also used as a dye. The plant is a sterile triploid whose chromosome complement is written as 2 n = 3 x = 24 in cytological notation. It is an autumn-flowering corm that blooms in September and October.

Saffron is an exceptionally valuable and expensive spice worldwide. Its high price reflects the long laborious hours of work it demands. The stigmas are spread on trays and dried over charcoal fires before use.

The native habitat of the saffron crocus is unknown despite its long cultivation, and the species most likely first appeared in Greece as an autotriploid selected from wild Crocus cartwrightianus. Saffron is sterile and seedless and is propagated by dividing its corms. In the Kozani region the Krokos flowers begin to appear from mid-October for 20 to 25 days and the harvesting consists of picking the flowers by hand from sunrise almost to sunset.

At the molecular level the crocus-specific CsCCD2 genes related to crocin synthesis originated from the duplication of CsCCD1 genes.

Saffron carries 0.5 to 1 percent essential oil, whose principal component is picrocrocin, while the coloring matter is crocin. The odour of the spice belongs to safranal, the volatile aldehyde responsible for it. Crocin is measured by spectrophotometry at 440 nm.

In saffron apocarotenoid biosynthesis the enzyme CsCCD2 performs a symmetric cleavage on zeaxanthin to form 3-hydroxy-β-cyclocitral and crocetin dialdehyde, which aldehyde dehydrogenase then oxidizes to crocetin.

Picrocrocin is the second most abundant component of saffron dry matter and decreases during drying at 35 to 50 °C over 4 to 7 hours, while safranal is absent before drying. Safranal is formed from picrocrocin during dehydration because of the high temperatures involved, and the same compound can also arise through extreme pH conditions or a two-step enzymatic process. A high temperature in the dehydration process promotes the isomerization of trans crocetin esters into cis forms and simultaneously drives safranal synthesis out of those carotenoids and out of picrocrocin.

Saffron is a labor-intensive crop, since the three stigmas are handpicked from each flower.^{1Saffron · Encyclopaedia Britannica ↗} Around 4,300 blossoms go into one ounce of the finished product^{9The Saffron Crocus (Crocus sativus) · Saffron Walden Town Council, Tourist Information Centre ↗3Crocus sativus — Plant Finder · Missouri Botanical Garden ↗}. The picking and separating behind one kilogram of dried threads likewise take about 370 to 470 hours of work^{10Saffron: The Story of the World's Most Expensive Spice · JSTOR Daily (Dumbarton Oaks Plant Humanities Initiative) ↗}.

In Herat markets saffron was worth between 1600 and 1800 US dollars per kilogram after the 2015 harvest and is seen as a strong income source for small and medium farmers ^{11National Saffron Development Program · Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan ↗}.

Dried saffron is traded in three forms — filaments, cut filaments and powder — and the international reference for these is the ISO 3632-1 specification for dried saffron obtained from the pistils of Crocus sativus, whose companion part ISO 3632-2 sets out the test methods used to measure colour, bitterness and aroma. The second edition of that standard has been withdrawn, with a new 2025 version available. The withdrawn edition was published in 2011-09, runs to eight pages, and was prepared by committee ISO/TC 34/SC 7.

Grading rests on spectrophotometric readings of one percent aqueous extracts taken at 257 nm for picrocrocin, at 330 nm for safranal, and at 440 nm for crocin colouring strength. Three categories — I, II and III — are judged on moisture, flower residues, foreign material, ash and colouring power. Category I requires at least 200 units at 440 nm, while Category III needs a minimum of 120. The highest category further requires 70 at 257 nm and a 330 nm value between 20 and 50. Category II is the medium-quality grade, between the high-quality first category and the low-quality third.

Colour intensity is the most important quality characteristic and sets the market price. Dehydration turns fresh stigmas into the spice, with stigmas losing roughly 80 percent of their weight, while ISO 3632 requires finished moisture below 12 percent. The product is stored in sealed containers away from moisture and light at 5 to 25 °C and marketed as strands or ground powder.

Pliny held saffron to be the substance most subject to adulteration, and gave as the best proof of its goodness that it snaps under the fingers, while moistened material is limp. Traditional fraud replaces saffron fully or partly with another plant, such as other crocus species, Carthamus tinctorius or turmeric, which saffron experts can detect but which becomes hard to identify visually once the spice is powdered. Safflower resembles saffron closely and shares its aromatic properties, and its cheap stigmas are commonly added to pure saffron to cut costs.

Reports persist of horse hairs, corn silks and shredded paper passed off as saffron. One test measures eugenol with an ion mobility spectrometer to quantify safflower adulteration; the calibration curve had a coefficient of determination of 0.949, and five of twenty market samples proved adulterated. Stable isotope ratios of carbon and hydrogen in safranal, measured by gas chromatography-isotope ratio mass spectrometry together with metabolite concentrations by UHPLC-DAD, separate synthetic from natural material: the mean hydrogen isotope ratio was near 36 per mil for synthetic safranal against minus 210 per mil for natural safranal. A model using the carbon isotope ratio with trans-crocetin, picrocrocin and crocins C2 and C3 discriminated saffron from Iran, Spain or other origins, scoring 100 percent on the classification matrix and 82.5 percent on the prediction matrix.

Iran grows about 90 percent of the world's saffron yet holds only 16 percent of the global market, whose turnover is about 1.1 billion dollars. Some 75 percent of the cultivated saffron land in Iran lies in plots of less than one hectare, and yields average between 3.3 and 3.5 kilograms per hectare. Most of the Iranian crop is exported in bulk, with companies in countries such as Spain handling the packaging, marketing and distribution. In 2012 Khorasan Razavi had 65,222 hectares of cultivated saffron land, the largest area in the country, while Khorasan Jonubi had 14,262 hectares, and Torbat heydariye, Kashmar, Gonabad, Ghaen and Ferdos are among the well-functioning saffron centres of the Khorasan provinces.

Iran produced more than 260 tons of saffron in 2013 but exported only 136 tons, worth 200 million dollars, while its 2012 exports of 139 tons were worth 418 million dollars. About 65 tons of Iranian saffron were smuggled abroad in the first nine months of the Iranian year that began in March 2023, and 90 percent of it went to Afghanistan.

The Afghan saffron programme expects at least 20,000 rural families to gain sustainable incomes and farmers' inclination toward opium cultivation to be reduced.

Afghanistan aims to expand saffron cultivation from 1000 hectares to between 3000 and 4000 hectares and to raise output from 3500 kilograms to 14000 kilograms.

The producer Rumi Spice sells a grade higher than ordinary market material at 18 dollars (14 pounds) per gram.

The protected designation of origin for Krokos Kozanis requires that every part of the production, processing and preparation process take place within the specific region ^{6Krokos Kozanis PDO · European Commission, Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development ↗}. Under the PDO La Mancha the weather conditions of the production area determine the flowering calendar, with blooms appearing between the second fortnight of October and the first fortnight of November ^{17Azafrán de La Mancha PDO · Consejo Regulador de la Denominación de Origen Protegida Azafrán de La Mancha ↗}. Plucking the stigmas from the La Mancha flower is a manual process done by pinching and breaking the style where it is white, after which the three stigmas are placed in a container for drying^{17Azafrán de La Mancha PDO · Consejo Regulador de la Denominación de Origen Protegida Azafrán de La Mancha ↗}.

The Kashmir application was filed on 03-12-2018 in class 30 by the Agriculture Production Department of Jammu and Kashmir, whose registry address is the Directorate of Agriculture in Srinagar, and the authorised users listed for the mark include growers at Samboora, Patalbagh and Pampore^{18Kashmir Saffron — Geographical Indication application 635 · Intellectual Property India, Government of India ↗}.

Packaging rules extend the designation beyond the field. Saffron marketed under the PDO La Mancha is sold exclusively and packaged in containers not exceeding a net weight of 100 grams ^{17Azafrán de La Mancha PDO · Consejo Regulador de la Denominación de Origen Protegida Azafrán de La Mancha ↗}.

The documentary record of saffron reaches back to a Mesopotamian work concerning Sargon of Akkad dated to 2300 BCE. The word itself is traced by etymologists to Medieval Latin safranum, derived from the Arabic az-za'faran. In early times the chief seat of saffron cultivation was Cilicia in Asia Minor. The Arabs cultivated the plant in Spain about 961 and it is mentioned in an English leechbook of the 10th century.

Saffron was first planted in Walden in the time of Edward III. The demand for yellow dye from the woollen industry likely drove the growth of its cultivation on the chalk soil around the town.

Saffron was already harvested in the Minoan period, between 2600 and 1100 BCE, and a painting of about 1600 BCE shows a young woman gathering it. One of the earliest frescoes at the palace of Knossos is the Saffron Gatherer, depicting a monkey picking crocus flowers. Arthur Evans took the figure for a boy and had a child's head given to it in the first reconstruction, although similarities to the blue monkeys of the House of the Frescoes were noted and blue was not used for human skin in Minoan painting.

Greek myth made the flower the memorial of Krokos, a young mortal friend of Hermes who was killed by a discus, three drops of whose blood formed the three stigmas that constitute the spice.

• 2300 BCE
  Mesopotamian reference
  A Mesopotamian work about Sargon of Akkad supplies one of the earliest references to saffron^{10Saffron: The Story of the World's Most Expensive Spice · JSTOR Daily (Dumbarton Oaks Plant Humanities Initiative) ↗}.
• about 961
  Cultivation in Spain
  The Arabs cultivated saffron in Spain^{1Saffron · Encyclopaedia Britannica ↗}.
• 10th century
  English leechbook
  Saffron is mentioned in an English leechbook^{1Saffron · Encyclopaedia Britannica ↗}.
• time of Edward III
  Planting at Walden
  Saffron was first planted in Walden^{9The Saffron Crocus (Crocus sativus) · Saffron Walden Town Council, Tourist Information Centre ↗}.

In traditional medicine saffron is described as an enlivening and antidepressant plant. Al-Hawi mentions a variety of saffron properties, including diuretic, analgesic, anti-inflammatory, hepatoprotective, appetite suppressant, hypnotic, antidepressant and bronchodilator effects. Modern science supports its stigma and petal extracts for mild to moderate depression.

The eye trial was designed as a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study and was registered in the Iranian National Registry for Clinical Trials. Participants took two oral capsules a day, each containing 15 mg of saffron extract, for six months. ERG amplitude changes differed significantly between the saffron and placebo groups at three months in dry AMD (P = 0.03) and in wet AMD (P = 0.007), but the differences were no longer significant at six months (P = 0.12 and P = 0.26).

The PDO La Mancha Saffron constitutes a triple guarantee of Spanish origin saffron, the highest quality colour, flavour and aroma, and a comprehensive control system that eliminates any risk of exposure in the product.

The eleven producers of the Taliouine cooperative, supported by the Moroccan NGO Migrations et Développement, farm small plots of land and gather the flowers at dawn between October and November while the petals are still closed.